time is a social construct

The discordant scratching of quills upon parchment fills the room as Tom's classmates do their assigned work and Tom focuses on his own reading for the evening. He resolutely ignores the piece of parchment sitting innocuously on his own desk. But in the end, he has to mark the page he's on and close the book, turning his head to scowl at the offender.

Tom Riddle,
or whoever you are, who stole my Lord's past name,

My Lord does not appreciate impertinance. Do not bother to wait any longer for a letter that will not arrive. If you truly support our cause, approach our spy at Hogwarts to be initiated among the Death Eaters. Surely you are able to find out who it is.

Yours in service,
Lucius Malfoy

Tom fumes silently as recalls the contents of the letter, his fists clenched in his sheets and teeth grit. The familiar anger rises and threatens to blind him, but he shoves it forcefully aside. The vision of his future self getting the letter and tossing it aside to some follower dismissively gets his blood boiling. To think that the Dark Lord did not even recognise his own writing, his own magic. It is unbelievable that he could've fallen so far, lost so much power in a mere five decades.

Aside from that, the letter itself makes his lips curl in irritation. It's a blatant trap. Lucius Malfoy mocks him by writing him a childish, obvious sham, and his head pounds in anger, visions of his basilisk swallowing the man running in his mind as he plans revenge.

Tom pauses mid-min-rant.

Speaking of his basilisk...

~

Tom visits the second-floor girls' bathroom the next day after his last class, hissing at the tap to open. He wrinkles his nose at the green stuff covering the surface of the pipe, cleaning it with a wave of his hand. Jumping down, he hisses close after him and hears the entrance grind shut. There's shed skin in the pathway now, and lots of bones. He enters the main chamber and his blood freezes when he sees a giant corpse lying partly in a pool of water, body curved and mouth wide open.

After a moment, he approaches slowly. The corpse has not rotten, likely due to the magical properties of the skin and scales. One fang lies abandoned a short distance away, and blood has dried around the giant snake, brown like rust. There's a gaping hole in the roof of the basilisk's mouth.

He hears running footsteps and turns around sharply, wand up and pointed at the intruder, who immediately freezes and— it's Potter.

Tom stares incredulously for a second and that's all it takes for the other boy to shoot a fizzing spell at him, and he recovers his sense and blocks. There's a flurry of colour and light before he gets the boy to kneel at his feet, wandless and panting in exertion. Blood covers the right side of his face.

During the exchange, Tom has drawn one sound conclusion: if Potter could get in here on his own— and why had he not heard of the boy's parseltongue abilities? —then he must have killed his basilisk.

"Did you kill her?" he snarls.

Potter's eyes widen and his jaw falls open. "Huh? I mean, yes, but I was going to be killed!" he defends himself.

Tom bares his teeth. "How did you get in here?"

"I can speak parseltongue," the boy says as if it's an insult. "And Myrtle said you went in there."

"Ah, of course, Myrtle." He'd forgotten about her. She was a ghost now, was she not? Dismissing the thought, Tom smiles down at the boy. "Shall we get to business?"

"By which you mean, shall we kill me?" he asks, frowning.

Tom laughs. "How perceptive of you, Harry."

"Well, you shouldn't," Potter says, lifting his chin defiantly. "I have information you might find useful."

"About what?"

"I'm not saying that now."

"When else? If not now, you'll never get the chance," Tom smirks, rolling his wand.

"I'm not telling you until we're both back above ground, out of Myrtle's bathroom," Potter tells him.

"But Harry," he drawls. "I have no idea whether you are telling the truth or simply lying to escape your fate. What assurance can you give me? Nothing."

"Not nothing," Potter injects. "I can tell you about how I defeated you. You've been dying to know, haven't you?"

Tom's hand freezes and he hates himself for it. Idiot.

"But this trade isn't fair, Harry. Information for your life? I definitely get the short end..."

Potter makes a frustrated sound. "What else do you want?"

Tom grins.

~

Tom dusts off his uniform as they climb up the pipe with the help of ridges in the walls.

"Did Slytherin do this every time he visited his pet?" Potter grumbled. "We had to hitch a ride with a phoenix the first time out. It was much easier. And faster."

"Salazar Slytherin would not have used this entrance," Tom corrects him. "This is most likely just a backup of a backup entrance cum exit in case the original and the main backups were sealed, which would not happen, but Salazar was capable like that. It never hurts to be too cautious."

"You're being chatty," Potter notices, eyes narrowing in suspicion.

Tom smiles genially. "I am, of course, a normal student who is not undeservingly rude to his underclassman."

Potter scrunches his nose, muttering something like bad example, but Tom doesn't bother listening. He leads the way to the dungeons, taking a deep breath when the cold draft finally hits him, hears Potter swear as he shivers, and opens the door to a long-abandoned classroom.

Settling down into a chair, he turns to the other boy with a polite smile. "Now, down to business. Shall we discuss the terms of our agreement?"

He tries to keep his annoyance in check, but Potter must have noticed, because he grins at him unrepentantly and takes a seat beside Tom, turning it so they're facing each other.

"Of course, my lord."

Tsk. He's going to ignore that. For now.

~

"Absolutely not," Potter says firmly to every proposition Tom makes. By now, he's convinced that Potter is being difficult on purpose. Potter continues, "You can't kill me anyway. I escaped death by your hands not once or twice, but a grand total of four times, remember? I can do it again."

"You can escape death by my hands, but what of my followers?"

Potter looks surprised. "Huh. I'm kinda shocked you thought about that. I mean, your doppelganger certainly didn't. He always insists on doing me in all by himself, you know? Well, anyway, what followers do you have left?"

Tom bristles. "My other self is an idiot and I claim no connection to him." He hates to admit it, but the excessive use of horcruxes has surely corrupted his mind. "And I have several men who are still loyal to me, the true Voldemort whose mind can see actual sense. They will abandon that poor excuse of a Dark Lord at my behest."

"Wow," the boy says. "Wanna join my side? I could use that kinda trump card, really."

"Take this seriously," Tom snarls.

"I'm kinda tired," Potter informs him. "We'll negotiate later, okay? I mean, I'm not stupid enough to do this on my own. I'll bring two people, you can bring two people, too! Bye, I guess."

And then he leaves before Tom can say anything in response. The sheer audacity of that boy.

~

.

~

Three months earlier:

Tom stares down at the documents in his hand, names and pictures of the Dark Lord's most trusted.

Lucius Malfoy, Theodore Nott (deceased), Bellatrix Lestrange, Antonin Dolohov (deceased), Rabastan Lestrange (deceased), Rodolphus Lestrange (deceased), Antonin Dolohov (deceased), Augustus Rookwood, Evan Rosier, Regulus Black (deceased).

Some of these names are unfamiliar to him, but he recognises their family names. Black, Malfoy, Lestrange... If the Dark Lord truly has this many followers he trusts... maybe some of them are replacements for the deceased ones. That is likelier.

But no. He needs more names, older ones, ones he knows personally. Ones he can trust.

He compiles a list of his followers from his time, his present, but as far as he knows, most of them are dead or in Azkaban. A breakout could be arranged, but he doesn't want to get his hands dirty as soon as he's made an identity for himself. Death Eaters would affect Goblin business and they might stop cooperating.

He scans the list.

Abraxas Malfoy
Cadmus Lestrange
Orion Black
Walburga Black
Emrys Rosier
Alexandré Avery
Steven Mulciber
Theodore Nott

Three of them still living... Tom swallows down a moment of unwanted emotion and pulls out another roll of parchment to set about writing a letter to an old friend.

~

.

~

When he's brushing his teeth before bed, Potter's words soon make their way into his mind again, and his good mood vanishes as he hisses at the air.

Wanna join my side, the voice taunts as he glares at his reflection.

His dormmates wisely leave him to himself as he throws magic against the mirror, the boy's cheery voice not subsiding in the slightest, his impudent grin dangling in his mind persistently.

~

Just as he's falling asleep, he bolts upright.

Potter is on the right track, he thinks. Maybe, in order to succeed where his future self failed, he merely needs to use all the resources at my disposal... even if they may be irritating and uncooperative.

He would recruit Harry Potter, the destroyer of Lord Voldemort.

For now, though, he falls back against his soft pillow and falls asleep. The one thing that is without a doubt better in this future is that the sheets are of a much better quality.

~

He completely forgets to wonder how Potter knew he'd be in the Chamber at that time.

~

.

~

Three months earlier:

Miles away, an old wizard raises a withered hand towards his window to welcome an owl just as old, its talons blunt and scraping his robes.

He lifts a pale hand to untie the letter and then drops it as his eyes catch the familiar seal. Fingers carding through his now-white hair, he deliberates on whether to open it. It couldn't be good news, is all he knows, if he is being contacted after decades.

Finally, with a trembling hand, he picks it up and breaks the seal, and the letter falls open.